belvoran

A VERY GOOD NEWS!!!

Yea, I know, shouting is not the best thing, but this is a really good news.

Well, people will just write Mozilla... because that's what they know, and a standard human doesn't want to learn. That's why they usually use FF for Firefox, although it's one word, and the official abbreviation is Fx.

Promoting this change will cost millions.

I hope this is not the same case, but when I was working on lots of places, and there was a manager who didn't have any results, he usually proposed things like this one. Useless, not needed, confusing clients, and extremely expensive. Then the upper management, who usually was not very technical, and couldn't understand our changelogs, was very happy with this change. Maybe because this was the only thing they could fully understand. This kind of change usually was something like: changing the name of the main product, the name of the company, or changing the official colors (which included a new logo, new website, lots of new printed materials). Did I say that this manager was promoted?

I'm getting sick of that Hype Driven Development.

For the last 15 years I was always slow, bad, and pessimistic. In fact I was fast, good, and realistic. However in the companies I was working at, the promoted guys were always writing buggy code, and really didn't understand what was going on. They even didn't want to understand that. They were promoted, and not me. Why? Because the speed was what there managers were promoted for. So they wanted to surround themselves with similar stupid-but-fast programmers. This way they all were promoted, got bonuses, and they were one brainless corporation family. I wanted to make some good work, and understand why something works this, or other way.

And one day I gave up. It was hard to hear all the time something like "you are too pessimistic, why you always say that we cannot build the Tardis in a month?", or "You are too slow, you see that guy in the corner? He is ten times faster then the whole team (and he is happy working in an open space). And now the whole team will be fixing the thousands of failing tests (caused by this guy) for the next six months. Because if they will be red, I won't get the yearly bonus.". The latter is real.

So I don't care anymore. My side projects are opposite. So I build them slowly. Very slowly. And I learn all the things around them.

There is no quicksort mentioned.

PAPER!!! I have tried lots of electronic things, and programs. And there is still one unbeatable: paper. With pen, pencils, and fountain pens.

Bullet journal is also worth checking,however I don't feel like we love each other.

What is O(n log n)? Time complexity? What about memory requirement? Last month I decreased memory requirement from 16GB to 100MB in one implementation of a "stable&fast" algorithm. Really, using a function just because it's O(n log n) without understanding its characteristic is like a blind surgeon randomly amputating limbs because maybe it will help. But that's fine for me, I have more work then, fixing software bugs made by incompetent* programmers is quite nice.

*incompetent - those who think they know something and are not willing to learn anything new

His argument should rather be written like "This is America, you are not allowed even to write your last name normally" - then it sounds stupid/irrational/funny enough.

Yea, use Python2, don't use Unicode, but please add information to a registration form like: "due to our programmers' limitations please don't enter your first name or last name as your write it, use only ASCII characters, otherwise our servers may blow up".

PS) This is what I had to work on last year. Happy US programmers who know nothing except English. And suddenly the software blew up, just because a client wanted to enter his name.

I was working in an open space for a couple of years. The phones were ringing happily, including the official corporate ones, which were standing on each desk. People were talking all the time. Talking, walking, looking at my screen, of course with lots of comments to my code. 70 people in the floor.

We had all the funny things for the group integration all the time. All the things except for thinking.

Yes, I was sitting all the time with my headphones, shouting maximally to my ears. Until one of those people making noise told me that it is not team friendly to have so loud phones, as he hears the music, and cannot concentrate.

Of course the management had their separate offices, with walls, and doors. They didn't see any problem.

For the last 6 years I've been working remotely from home. Well, what a change. In 4 hours I could do more than for a week in the open space.

Quite funny. My blog page (with text only) has score 4.06. Converting it to image is stupid. Btw. I've been working with a Korean company on a couple of Korean websites. What they provided was ONLY IMAGES. All the texts were images, new content was in images, all the changes were just image changes. It was a nightmare.

My wow moment was when I first found out something totally different than my comfort zone. It was SQL then. But it was 15 years ago.

Another wow moment was Perl, and its just three data types.

Then lisp.

Currently I think that the most mind changing languages for me were SQL, and C++. I don't know why, I just love Postgres, and I love the C++ speed.

However for the last 15 years I've been commercially programming in C, C++, Java, Javascript, Python, Ruby, Perl, Delphi, PHP, SQL.

What I like is different: I like Python, Postgres, SQL, Java, and I'm learning currently is the newest C++, and a little bit of Rust.

I'm not sure why I still have problems with understanding Haskell.

However when I'm looking for a remote job now, all that doesn't matter. I get some strange interviews with 10 minute algorithm tasks (if you don't remember the implementation of this task, which you have never seen before, you have no chance to write it). Or even recruiters not understanding the answers to technical questions they ask.

And most of the job offers I get require 10 years of writing in one language, so I'm wondering if I did good learning all those different things.